Book Away From American This Fall; Pilot Feud Has Made Airline Too Unreliable

If you’re making travel plans for this fall, avoid American Airlines. American has become too unreliable.

The carrier, reorganizing in bankruptcy court, has begun implementing cuts in pay, benefits and time off and outsourcing more flying to regional airlines. Pilots at American are doing what they (and pilots at other airlines) have done before — reacting angrily and hurting passengers. Pilots are calling in sick, moving airplanes slowly and grounding flights for broken parts that wouldn’t normally delay a flight. The pilots’ union denies any orchestrated action and blames management for operational problems.

American’s operation is in shambles. On Sunday, only 48% of American flights arrived on-time, and 25.6% were at least 45 minutes late, according to FlightStats.com, a flight-tracking service. American canceled 92 flights on Sunday, or 5% of its schedule.

Can’t blame the weather. United Airlines Southwest Airlines and US Airways all got more than 80% of their flights to the gate within 14 minutes of scheduled arrival, and Delta and jetBlue arrived more than 90% on time, according to FlightStats. Those airlines canceled 18 flights — combined.

Monday was even worse for American. Only 39% of flights arrived on-time, and 29% were excessively late, at 45 minutes or more past scheduled arrival. The airline canceled 5.8% of its flights–108 flights in total. Again, competitors had a good day of flying on Monday. Delta and jetBlue, notably, canceled zero flights. (The operational results are for mainline flights and don’t include regional airline partners.)

Tuesday showed marginal improvement, but still was terrible. FlightStats showed American only got 45.4% of its flights to the gate on-time, and 3.2% of flights were canceled. That’s still very high for cancellations, but some improvement over previous days.

This has been building for a few weeks. In the first half of September, American only got two-thirds of its flights to the gate on-time—well below all of its major competitors. American canceled 1.8% of its flights in the first half of the month, according to FlightStats. It was the only major airline above 1% in cancellations. Cancellations have been higher at American for some time, in part because the airline is still flying an older fleet more prone to mechanical breakdowns.

American said on Monday that it was cutting its fall schedule back some to give more flexibility for covering flights when pilots call in sick or delay flights. That might help some, but the prospect for more labor problems this fall should give travelers concern.

Airlines workers periodically perform badly or walkout to get the attention of management and gain leverage in negotiations. It’s a messy battle that leaves passengers as collateral damage. Late flights means families with small children get stranded at airports when they miss connections. Canceled flights mean people miss meetings, weddings, funerals, cruise sailings. Business travelers get to hotels at 2 a.m. and 3 a.m. The impact on customers can be outrageous.

If passengers book away, workers are shooting themselves in the foot. The bankrupt company has less money to reorganize; less money to pay workers. American’s pilots may quite rationally figure that crippling the company will increase the chances of a merger with US Airways -– American’s pilots’ union has already agreed with US Airways management on a hypothetical new contract superior to what American’s management is imposing after a federal judge canceled the pilots’ existing contract. Many are reacting emotionally, simply trying to hurt what they consider to be inept managers who are imposing punishing contracts as a result of the company’s failings.

Either way, it’s a dangerous game. Angry passengers can be slow to return. Sometimes important business-travel accounts are lost to competitors for years. Unreliable airlines have to cut prices and offer deeper discounts to win back travelers. That means fewer profits and shrinking airlines–so less money to pay pilots and fewer jobs for pilots.

In the past four years, American’s parent AMR Corp., tallied net losses of $6 billion. A big reason the airline has been losing so much money is that it has already lost ground among business travelers to competitors who, right now, are providing better service and better products.

Punishing customers will only make it worse. But for customers who have a choice, it makes sense to avoid American now until it gets its operation in order.

Comments (5 of 188)

Nervous about flying American this weekend. Pilots and all those that do the essential work that keep us alive at 35k feet deserve to be compensated fairly, and I'm sure all of us would be pretty upset if our pay was cut. Some may think they're overpaid, but wealth is relative. I'm sure African kids think minimum wage workers in the U.S. are overpaid. I can't guarantee though that I won't be angrier than a bag of bees if the pilot or other workers pull some funny stuff. I don't want to be a pawn in this game.

2:44 pm October 3, 2012

Finally wrote :

Finally, all you nay sayers need to acknowledge the author was correct in his guidance that travellers avoid American for now. Although he was early to awaken us to the challenges at AA, we now know through events of recent days and broader coverage that AA is completely in dis-array. Hope those who were quick to challenge him (at least on that point) now recognize he was absolutely right. . . . if you need to reliably count on getting from point A to point B on time, stay away from AA at least for now.

8:07 pm October 2, 2012

Justdesserts wrote :

Dear John,
The pilots did not wait to greet you because they were not getting paid. Yes, that is right. The flying public needs to know that the cost of the ticket does not even remotely cover the cost of the flying. And while the perception may be that the pilots are highly paid, they are also highly trained and educated. No one is giving them anything that they have not earned. This is a sad time at AA. But please, don't blame the workers. New leadership would be grand.

3:38 pm October 2, 2012

AA wife wrote :

I have been reading all the blogs about the airline pilots causing delays. The sad part is if anyone would do a little research they would find that it is AA management causing these delays. It is their ploy to make the pilots look responsible. When the first announcements of pilots calling in sick and causing delayed flights, a fellow pilot drove to work and was told to go home . He had a full flight to LGA and management cancelled the flight. If they were so short on pilots because of a sick out, why was he not reassigned to another flight. This is all the companys ploy to turn the pubic against the pilots. I have also heard from platunium customers that they are recieving letters from AA apologizing for the pilots behavor. My husband has never been told to call in sick by fellow employees or his union. Also in 2003, the pilot group took 43% pay cuts on the promise from AA they they would not go bankrupt. So as for pilot concessions they and other work groups gave them back into 2003. After this time Management took millions of dollars of pay outs. I just encourage everyone to look at the facts.

11:41 am October 1, 2012

Siobhan wrote :

I think your time and blog space would be better served educating passengers on travel challenges and encouraging them to maintain faith, flexibility and grace. Telling them to book elsewhere is mean spirited and counter productive to the regrowth of our nation. Teach your readers how to ctfo and remind them how lucky they are to live in a time and space that allows them to go to sleep on one part of the world and wake up on the other.

About The Middle Seat Terminal

Scott McCartney writes The Middle Seat every Thursday. The Wall Street Journal’s Travel Editor, Scott has been on the airline beat since 1995 — long enough to see it go from bust to boom and back to bust. He also writes a blog on travel at The Middle Seat Terminal.

Scott won the Online News Association award for online commentary in 2003 for “The Middle Seat,” the George Polk Award for transportation reporting in 2000, and has been honored by the Deadline Club and New York’s chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. Before joining the Journal in 1993, he spent 11 years at The Associated Press.

Scott, a native of Boston and graduate of Duke University, is the author of four books, includingThe Wall Street Journal Guide to Power Travel: How to Arrive with Your Dignity, Sanity, and Wallet Intact, which was published in 2009. He’s also an instrument-rated private pilot.